The raison d'etre for this volume and its four forthcoming companions is the conviction that nineteenth-century exegetes noted numerous parallels among the NT episties that still await evaluation. Those parallels were then often understood to be signs of literary dependence. With obvious sympathy for this older view, the current synopsis attempts to display the verbatim correspondences as completely as possible. The first two hundred pages cover Colossians. Following a very brief introduction (in both German and English) to the state of research and a short bibliography, the parallels are presented in three different ways. First, every verse from Colossians is listed along with its parallels in the authentic Paulines (here reckoned to be Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon). Second, the method is reversed, so that every verse in the authentic Paulines from Romans through Philemon is listed in order along with all the parallels to Colossians. Third is the synopsis proper-eight columns consisting of Colossians (on the left) with the parallels from the seven authentic Paulines displayed in Greek to the right in double pages. These parallels are each assigned to a category. Category 1 parallels "are text segments that, apart from minor permutations, follow one after another in both documents and whose position is similar in the overall outline of the document" (p. …